The verb “to slip” is quite versatile - you can slip, for example, into a dress, out of a room, slip on shoes or on a banana peel.

Your grades can slip, or you can slip into depression, and then you can feel like your life is slipping through your fingers. Considerably less fun than slipping on a banana peel, I'd wager.If I had the choice, I'd slip on a thousand banana peels rather than go through all that other slippage. (Is that even a word?)

This gets dark, be warned.

Long, tedious story short - I'm not that okay right now, and haven't been for about two and a half years. Functioning (or even high functioning), yes, but coping with increasingly unhealthy methods.

There is usually not a clear cause for depression, in the sense that you don't just snap into depression. Your life just progressively becomes worse and worse, until one day it doesn't feel like it's worth living anymore. (Your risk of developing depression could be higher if you're dealing with stress, chronic pain, drug use/abuse and other factors, such as genetics.)

The thing you have to understand about depression: it's not feeling sad all the time. It's feeling nothing most of the time. You can have happy moments, and you can fake happiness all you want, but when you're alone with your thoughts, you can't even convince yourself that your suicide would really be that big of a deal.And when you have basically written yourself off, Everything in your life starts to slip. Relationships, Grades, Things that you used to care about.When you feel like you don't have the energy to get out of bed (or because you actually don't have any energy, because you only had a 2 rice cakes, a cucumber, a can of monster energy and a protein bar the day before), caring about anything that used to be front and center in your life becomes hard. There are days where all you do is survive, and even that is more than you expected.

Not every day is like that, of course. Sometimes, I even have a good week, where every day mostly doesn't suck. But even the happiest of birthdays and coolest of roller coaster rides are dulled by a gray blur. Self harm is so prevalent under depressed people because even feeling pain is better than feeling nothing.

As of right now, I'm not actively suicidal (family and friends would be too sad and angry, and I don't want them to be), and I am taking care of my body (usually). I haven't self harmed for some time, too, and don't really plan on doing that again.My grades are mostly A’s and C’s, and an F in Math, but I'm working on it. I used to be able to get good grades on wits and my plainly astounding amount of general knowledge alone, and I was always the bright kid who got all A’s, so it's a bit hard to adjust to often being average.I want to be a teacher (English, Art and History or Philosophy), and I'm working towards that, as well.

And yeah, I'm not special. 3 million teenagers in the US are depressed, and there are even more people with “real problems”.But Misery isn't a contest. Just because someone has it worse, doesn't mean that everyone else is miraculously cured.

I periodically make some sketch about self harm (Hiding - http://app.sketchclub.com/sketch/10800413), Being Depressed (Tired - http://app.sketchclub.com/sketch/10605980) and other fun stuff, and I will be quick to say “Oh, don't worry, I'm all better now”. Of course, I don't want anyone to worry and I also don't want to be pitied. It's much easier to talk about all that stuff when it's not fresh. Otherwise, you (the observer) really don't know what to say. I know, I get it. It gets weird, and it feels like you're on eggshells, fearing to say something wrong. But feel free to trample around on those eggshells here, I'm not one to be offended easily, and I kinda want this to start a conversation.

I didn't really think that I would ever bring this into words, but I saw that Vent compo, and using anything but my ugly mug and sob story would have been disingenuous, so I stuck by it. I'm not proud or anything, and I don't really know if this is something that belongs on the Internet (probably not), but yeah. Here's my portrait and word vomit, hope you like. And if you stuck it out till now, please do comment something. Doesn't have to be nice, doesn't have to be related. Maybe a happy memory. Or something you want to get off your chest. After writing this out, I think venting is incredibly useful, and maybe you might like it as well if you try. You don't even have to publish your thoughts, maybe just write them down and tell me you did that.